Debt and Decline

San Diego

The U.S. Senate yesterday raised the debt ceiling to $9 trillion, averting a federal default. The debt ceiling has increased by an astonishing one-third during the Bush Administration.

It remains fiscally impossible to wage two wars while attempting to rebuild New Orleans and continuing to reduce taxes.

Interestingly, today’s New York Times review of Kevin Phillip’s new book, “American Theocracy,” outlines the “symptoms of a power already at its peak and about to decline.” However true it may be, the decline-of-empire stuff is entirely too facile and, with new generation of thoughtful and courageous leaders, it need not be inevitable.

Still, the Times reporting of Phillips’ study of traits shared by Rome, Hapsburg Spain, the Dutch Republic, Britain and the U.S. is useful:

- High debt, “which becomes crippling in its own right.”
- Hubris driven national strategic and military overreach.
- Pursuit of “abstract international missions" we can no longer afford.
- Widespread public concern over cultural and economic decay.
- Social polarization and a widening gap between rich and poor.
- “Growing religious fervor” expressed in a close church-state relationships.
- Escalating missionary zeal.
- Reliance on "faith as opposed to reason" and the downplaying of science.
- Considerable popular anticipation of millennialism.

The truth can hurt, but it remains the truth nonetheless.